There’s a fundamental flaw in the OP’s thinking. Just because the adoption of liberal values may be a response to a personal experience of exclusion, alienation or disempowerment does not mean that this is the only possible reason, or even the dominant reason, for adopting liberal values.
We can see this easily if we apply the same reasoning to a more specific example. Jews may oppose antisemitism because they themselves have been injured or affected by antisemitic attitudes, or because they are a member of a community so injured or affected. But this does not mean that, to account for non-Jews who also oppose antisemitism, we need to postulate that they, too, have been in some way personally affected or injured by antisemitism, or that they are members of a community injured or affected.
I’ll offer myself up as an anecdote. I’m an older straight white man from a rural Christian Western European background who’s retired from a career in law enforcement. I’m so far inside the conservative demographic, it’s scary.
But I’m not a conservative. Mainly because I disagree with many of the things they stand for.
I don’t feel it’s an issue of self-interest. I can’t think of any way in which conservative policies would be targeting me personally. In fact, many conservative policies would benefit me personally because I’m on the inside, as I said above. The only way in which I can see conservative policies harming me are when those policies harm all of society.
Are you seriously asking for a cite that black people haven’t done as well in American society as white people? And that gay people haven’t done as well as straight people? And that women haven’t done as well as men?
I’d argue it’s your self-interested model that is wrong. Remove that, and look at our common interests. Could it be that all of us care about the ostracized and discriminated against?
I’ve said before that it didn’t even occur to me to be self-interested in the 2016 election. There was just such a clear right and wrong, and it was just so clear how harmful Trump would be to those others, that it didn’t even occur to me until after he was elected how it could affect me.
All of this said, I do think there may be some sort of trigger that helps people care about others. I think that, if you don’t face hardships yourself, it can be really hard to care. I also think you have to be able to see others as real people, and not as people to blame for what hardships you have.
But, still, that’s not self interest. Yes, my mental illness and being poor are probably a part of why I can empathize. But that doesn’t mean I’m actually thinking about my own self-interest.
To me, morality is actually what separates humans from animals. My morality is part of how I value myself as a human being. When I do mess up, it hurts. Don’t get me wrong–I learned long ago not to beat myself up over it, and to realize I can only just do what I can to be better in the future. But if I ever gave up and stopped trying, I would hate myself.
Both of my brothers are heterosexual, married white males, with children. Both in their first marriage. Middlebro is much more conservative than Littlebro, but he’s also much worse at getting out of his own skin: his even more conservative wife, more so. Littlebro is better than Middlebro at negotiations among other things because he’s better at seeing the other person’s point of view… heck, because he actually tries from the start, while Middlebro doesn’t until you spell things out for him. The same ability to think himself in another person’s shoes makes Littlebro more liberal. That doesn’t mean he’s some sort of “kumbayah softie”: he has no problem pointing out when someone is shooting himself in the foot, but when he does it’s always something that’s real and fixable. Littlebro is capable of seeing that something which favors him by hurting other people close to him end up in a total loss; Middlebro has problems seeing why something that bothers him should be put in place until you spell out that it favors the group; Middlebro’s wife rejects any changes even if they favor her just because they are changes and attempts at explaining that they favor [whomever, which again may even include her] meet with a blank stare.
These three people are just examples, but the same traits appear to be common in many people when looking at these three traits: socially liberal, resistant to change and empathic. The more empathic and less resistant to change, the more liberal, with empathy usually being dominant over resistance to change.
Well, there’s your problem. Even if this were true for people overall, you can’t assume this holds for all groups regardless of politics. Liberals may, in fact, be the set of people for whom this is not true.
IMHO, people in this thread are overthinking things - most people are liberals for the exact same reason that most people are conservatives: because they were raised that way.
Nah. Political indoctrination happens mainly in conservative families. Most of those children will go on to become conservative. When they meet people who aren’t conservative, they assume those people have been indoctrinated like them, just in an opposite way. Or, some people (like me) will go heterodox when life experience intrudes on the imagined worldview.
In reality, normal people don’t run their households like a political education camp. Some children of those households will become liberals, some will be conservative, and they might take hints from their parents beliefs (if they are aware of them).
Can you help us out with a hint of what we might find interesting about this? Is it political or philosophical? It mostly seems like a psychological/psychiatric issue to me.
Then why did most liberal people I know have liberal parents?
My son, hopefully, will be a liberal when he grows up, and to a large degree, it will be because we raised him right. I don’t think we “indoctrinated” him, but I don’t think that most conservative parents indoctrinate their children, either. They just expose them to their own opinions during their formative years, the same way we did.
And children are *achingly *aware of their parents’ beliefs; after all, we’re the most important people in their worlds.
Look, I know we all want to think of ourselves as great independent thinkers, but in the end, we’re all largely products of our environment. Ask any psychologist, sociologist or anthropologist - the vast majority of them will agree with me.
It is how they perceive matters. And, far from the equality Liberals profess to preach, they find themselves at the bottom of the heap. One only has to look at threads like this one and this one to validate that.
The chart is how the fantasy liberals that live in Sean Hannity’s head characterize the world. It has little to do with the real world. That sometimes one can find random anonymous liberals screaming obscenities at conservatives does nothing to support this fantasy.
Of course not. Normal people let the public schools indoctrinate their children.
Liberals will usually get quizzical stares when encountering non-political folks. They won’t argue with them. They just internalize that the liberal rejects human nature and keep it moving. I wouldn’t say liberals are outcasts in society but I would guess they go through life feeling a bit alienated.
This is probably why they sequester themselves in like-minded communities and institutions. I see no problem with that, but the problem comes in when they try to control the rest of society and wield power through the various institutions they control.
“Live and let live” is the most bizarre phrase in the English language for most liberals. They cannot imagine allowing anyone anywhere to live differently. They permit different clothing, music (in some cases), and food, but that is about it. Everyone must engage in a stilted and managed social democracy or else there is oppression and inequality.
Many liberals are also against fun. This is the wowzer Mencken talked about. Uptight progressive types. This sets them apart from society to a degree.